Uprooting national narratives: Representations of the forest industry in Port Alberni, British Columbia.

摘要

This work is an analysis of three representations of the forest industry in Port Alberni, British Columbia. I contend that these different representations—a radio broadcast, a museum and a site of heritage tourism—rely upon a dominant national narrative of Canada as a white settler space, a narrative that is racialized and gendered, but which often passes as the ‘truth’ about the nation. Through a discursive analysis of the three sites, I aim to reveal how this process occurs. The white settler narrative, I argue, is problematic from an environmental, anti-racist and anti-oppressive perspective, because of its embedded celebration of colonialism and forest devastation, its racism and its sexism. The project of unpacking the white settler narrative and revealing its oppressive nature helps to disrupt the notion that it is a ‘true’ story about Canada, and creates space for alternative narratives to emerge.